The Belgian region of Flanders has recommended a 21-day quarantine for patients with confirmed or suspected monkeypox. The announcement came after the country confirmed three cases of the viral illness.
“The patient should be isolated until the possibility of infection has been ruled out or has passed, until the lesions have dried up and healed, typically within 21 days,” the local health agency said in a statement. Said.
This is the first announcement to recommend isolation to contain the disease, which has already been confirmed in 11 countries in Europe and North America, according to WHO (World Health Organization). At least eighty cases have already been confirmed.
WHO says it is working with these countries to support patients and understand how transmission begins.
What is monkey flower?
Monkeypox or “orthopoxvirosis simia” is a rare disease whose pathogen can be transmitted from animal to human and vice versa. When the virus spreads to humans, it is mainly transmitted from various wild animals, rodents or primates.
In early cases, infection results from direct contact with lesions in the blood, body fluids, skin or mucous membranes of infected animals.
Secondary, person-to-person transmission can result from close contact with infected secretions from the airways, lesions on the skin of an infected person, or objects that have recently been contaminated with biological fluids or materials from a patient’s wounds.
Its symptoms are less similar to those seen in former smallpox patients: fever, headache, muscle and back pain during the first five days.
Later, rashes, lesions, pustules and finally crusts occur on the face, palms and soles.
The disease was first described in humans in 1970 in a 9-year-old boy living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an area where smallpox has been eradicated since 1968.
Since 1970, cases of human “orthopoxvirosis simia” have been reported in 10 African countries. In early 2003, cases were also confirmed in the United States, the first case outside of the African continent.
*With AFP
source: Noticias
